10 Database Migration Anti-Patterns and What to Do Instead
Editing applied migrations, environment-specific scripts, ORM auto-DDL in production, untested rollbacks: ten habits that break deployments, with a fix for each.
40 articles
The SchemaDrawer blog
Practical writing on database migrations, schema design, ER diagrams and the tooling around them. New articles every couple of weeks; there is an RSS feed.
All articles
Zero-Downtime Database Migrations: The Expand and Contract Pattern
How to change a live schema without an outage: expand, backfill in batches, switch reads and writes, then contract. With safe NOT NULL, renames and lock timeouts.
Testing Database Migrations in CI with Docker and Testcontainers
Run migrations against a throw-away real database on every change: a Testcontainers and Flyway example, CI service containers, version matrices and schema checks.
SQLite in Development, PostgreSQL in Production: What Breaks
Type affinity, limited ALTER TABLE and foreign keys that are off by default: what breaks when you develop on SQLite and deploy to PostgreSQL, and how to avoid it.
SQL Server Schemas: dbo, Ownership and How Migration Tools Handle Them
What a schema is in SQL Server, why everything lands in dbo, how default schemas work, and how Flyway, Liquibase, EF Core, DbUp and FluentMigrator target schemas.
Why Oracle Shows Your Tables in UPPERCASE: Case Folding Explained
Oracle folds unquoted names to upper case, PostgreSQL to lower case, MySQL depends on a setting, SQL Server on collation. The rules, and how to stay out of trouble.
Choosing Column Types: VARCHAR vs TEXT, TIMESTAMPTZ, NUMERIC vs FLOAT
A practical guide to column types in PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle and SQLite: strings, timestamps, money, booleans, JSON, enums and what diagrams report.
Transactional DDL: Why PostgreSQL Rolls Back Failed Migrations
Which engines run DDL in transactions (PostgreSQL, SQL Server, SQLite), which commit implicitly (MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle), and how to write migrations for both.
PostgreSQL vs MySQL vs MariaDB: How to Choose a Database
A practical comparison of PostgreSQL, MySQL and MariaDB: data types, SQL conformance, transactional DDL, replication, hosting and what each means for migrations.
Diesel Migrations for Rust: up.sql, down.sql and schema.rs
How Diesel manages a schema in Rust: the CLI, timestamped folders with up.sql and down.sql, the versions table, the generated schema.rs and embedded migrations.
Doctrine Migrations in Symfony: Generate, Review and Deploy
Doctrine Migrations in Symfony from setup to deploy: diff versus generate, the Version class, the versions table, reviewing generated SQL and running safely.
Rails Migrations: schema.rb vs structure.sql and When Each Wins
How Active Record migrations work, what schema.rb cannot express, when to switch to structure.sql, and how db:prepare and strong_migrations keep a team safe.
Laravel Migrations: Best Practices for Teams
Practical rules for Laravel migrations in a team: one change per file, constrained foreign keys, frozen history, schema dumps, safe production runs and tests.
DbUp vs FluentMigrator: Two Ways to Migrate .NET Databases
DbUp runs plain SQL scripts once and journals them; FluentMigrator describes changes in C#. How each works, where each wins, and how both sit next to EF Core.
Sqitch: Database Change Management Without Version Numbers
How Sqitch plans, deploys, reverts and verifies database changes with named dependencies instead of version numbers, and when it is worth the learning curve.
Schema Drift: How to Detect It and How to Prevent It
What schema drift is, how it creeps in through hotfixes and unsynced environments, the tools that detect it and the workflow that stops it coming back.
Database Documentation Best Practices for Engineering Teams
What to document about a database, where it should live, how to generate the parts that rot, and how to keep schema docs honest through code review and CI.
Go Migration Tools Compared: golang-migrate, goose, dbmate, Atlas
Four Go migration tools compared: file layouts, how each records applied versions, checksums, embedding in Go binaries, database support and where each fits.
Foreign Keys Done Right: ON DELETE Rules, Indexing and Pitfalls
ON DELETE actions explained, why PostgreSQL leaves FK columns unindexed while InnoDB indexes them, deferrable constraints and NOT VALID on big tables.
Mermaid ER Diagrams: Syntax, Examples and Limitations
How to write Mermaid erDiagram blocks: entities, attributes with PK and FK markers, cardinality symbols, where they render, and what Mermaid cannot do.
EF Core Migrations: Add-Migration, Bundles, Idempotent Scripts and CI
What dotnet ef migrations add generates, how to apply migrations with database update, idempotent scripts and bundles, and surviving model snapshot conflicts.
Alembic Autogenerate: What It Detects, What It Misses, How to Fix It
How Alembic autogenerate compares SQLAlchemy metadata with the live database, the changes it cannot see, constraint naming conventions and SQLite batch mode.
Primary Keys: Serial, Identity, UUID or ULID?
Integer, UUID or ULID primary keys compared on size, index locality, guessability and generation, with engine specifics and a recommendation per situation.
12 Tools to Visualize a Database Schema, Compared
From dbdiagram.io and DBeaver to SchemaSpy, tbls and Mermaid: what each schema visualization tool takes as input, what it produces and when to use it.
TypeORM Migrations Guide: Generate, Run and Avoid synchronize
TypeORM migrations in practice: DataSource setup, generate versus create, running TypeScript migrations, migrationsRun, and why synchronize is unsafe in production.
Django Migrations Explained: From makemigrations to Production
What Django migration files contain, how dependencies and RunPython work, when to squash, how to check migrations in CI, and the traps that catch teams.
Many-to-Many Relationships: Designing Join Tables the Right Way
Join table design: naming, composite key or surrogate id, extra columns, indexes both ways and ON DELETE rules, with SQL, Django, Prisma and Rails examples.
How to Keep Your Database Diagram Up to Date with CI
Turn the schema diagram into a build artifact: regenerate it from the migrations on every change, commit it through a pull request and review the diff.
Drizzle ORM Migrations: drizzle-kit generate, the Journal and migrate
How Drizzle migrations work: drizzle-kit generate, the SQL files, snapshots and meta/_journal.json, applying them with migrate, and when to use push instead.
Liquibase Changelog Formats: XML, YAML, JSON or Formatted SQL?
Liquibase accepts XML, YAML, JSON and formatted SQL changelogs. The same table in each format, how include and includeAll work, and which format fits which team.
Database Normalization Explained with a Real Schema (1NF to BCNF)
Normalization walked through on a vet clinic spreadsheet: 1NF, 2NF, 3NF and BCNF explained in plain words, ending in the PetClinic tables, plus when to denormalize.
How to Generate an ER Diagram from Migration Files
Three ways to turn Flyway, Liquibase, Prisma or Django migrations into an ER diagram, and a step-by-step guide to the one that always matches reality.
Knex vs Sequelize vs TypeORM vs MikroORM vs Drizzle Migrations
How five Node.js tools write, track and run database migrations, with a real migration file for each, a comparison table and advice on which one fits your project.
Flyway Migration Naming: Versioned, Repeatable and Undo Scripts
How Flyway names and orders migrations: the V, R and U prefixes, version separators, checksums, repair, outOfOrder and baseline, plus the mistakes that bite.
Database Naming Conventions: Tables, Columns, Keys and Indexes
A practical naming convention for tables, columns, keys, constraints and indexes, plus the case-folding rules of PostgreSQL, Oracle, MySQL and SQL Server.
How to Read a Database Schema Diagram: Keys and Relationships
Learn to read any schema diagram: primary and composite keys, foreign keys and arrow direction, one-to-many, join tables, one-to-one and self-references.
Prisma Migrate Explained: migration.sql, Shadow Database and Drift
How Prisma Migrate works: the migrations folder layout, migrate dev versus migrate deploy, the shadow database, drift detection and baselining an existing database.
Flyway vs Liquibase: Which Database Migration Tool Should You Use?
A practical comparison of Flyway and Liquibase: migration model, file formats, rollback, checksums and validation, integrations, and a decision guide for teams.
Why Parsing SQL Is Not Enough to Draw Your Database Schema
SQL parsers stumble on dialects, procedural blocks, generated DDL and renames across files. Running migrations on a real engine and reading the catalog is reliable.
What Is an ER Diagram? Entities, Relationships, Cardinality
A plain explanation of entity-relationship diagrams: entities, attributes, relationships, cardinality, the common notations, and what belongs in one.
Draw your schema in the next five minutes
One HTTP call with your migration files, one poll, one SVG. Free while we build it.